You sit down to finish something difficult. A few minutes later, your phone is in your hand.
Or you have the opposite problem. You can leave the phone alone, but an awkward conversation becomes so uncomfortable that you agree to something you don’t mean just to get out of it.
These are imagined situations, but the distinction matters. In one, you struggle to hold back. In the other, you struggle to stay with something difficult.
Two words associated with Epictetus speak to both: bear and forbear.
The Greek is anechou and apechou, often rendered “endure and abstain”. The first concerns the difficulties we ought to bear. The second concerns the actions and pleasures we ought to refrain from. That word ought matters. The advice needs judgement, including knowing when to leave.
It is easy to remember. Using it requires a more awkward question: which half is harder in the situation you are actually facing?
Where does “bear and forbear” come from?
The two-command maxim is preserved in Aulus Gellius’s Attic Nights, book 17, chapter 19. Gellius reports the philosopher Favorinus’s account of what Epictetus used to teach. Modern editions also collect this report among Epictetus’s fragments. Read Gellius, Attic Nights 17.19.
The same verbs also appear together in the surviving Discourses 4.8.20. George Long translates them as “how I bear and forbear”. There they belong to a description of how a philosopher lives, rather than standing alone as two commands. Read Discourses 4.8.
Gellius’s chapter begins with a complaint about people who call themselves philosophers but do little beyond talking about philosophy. He then quotes a passage from Arrian comparing badly received philosophical teaching to something poured into an unclean vessel. It spoils. The image is unpleasant on purpose.
Only after this do we reach the two words.
That context changes the advice. A slogan about practice appears inside a warning about people who collect words without changing their conduct. Having the phrase on your wall may help you remember it. It does not establish that you can use it when the phone lights up.
Gellius’s account identifies two failures: being unable to endure what we ought to endure, and being unable to restrain ourselves from what we ought to avoid. J. C. Rolfe translates the Greek pair as “bear and forbear”. His footnote describes it as a stock formula. There is no need to claim that Epictetus invented the wording for the teaching to be useful. Rolfe, volume III, page 267, note 2.
What does “endure and abstain” mean?
Bear: remain with an appropriate difficulty instead of immediately escaping it.
Forbear: hold back from an action you have reason to avoid instead of immediately following the urge.
“Hold up” and “hold off” can work as memory aids. They are not literal translations.
Imagine the unfinished report again. The person writing it may be perfectly capable of sitting through a long meeting. Endurance is not absent from their life. But as soon as the report becomes difficult, they begin scrolling. For that task, restraint deserves attention.
Now imagine someone who rarely checks their phone but cannot bear a colleague disagreeing with them. They change the subject or agree before considering what they think. Their useful practice may be staying in a safe conversation long enough to listen and give an honest answer.
Neither example gives us a permanent personality type. The harder half can change with the situation. A person who is disciplined at work may find it difficult to stop checking messages at night. Someone who tolerates physical effort may avoid a conversation they need to have.
At this point in my life, entering jiu-jitsu competitions is difficult for me. I get flooded with adrenaline. I have friends who enjoy competing and get excited about it. We can enter the same competition and have very different experiences. Their useful form of voluntary discomfort might be something I find easier, such as talking in front of a camera.
Epictetus makes room for this in Discourses 3.12, “On training”. Training should address the tendencies that need work. A person strongly drawn towards pleasure has a different starting point from someone inclined to avoid difficulty. Read Discourses 3.12. The broader guide to Epictetus’s Discourses explains how these conversations fit together.
Start with one ordinary situation. Where, exactly, do you tend to give way?
Does endurance mean putting up with everything?
The instruction to bear difficulty can become bad advice very quickly.
An unsafe situation, abuse, an injury that needs treatment, or exhaustion that calls for rest should not become a test of how much you can tolerate. Leaving, setting a boundary or asking for help may be the sensible action. A maxim cannot decide that for you.
The same problem appears in less serious forms when people begin treating difficulty itself as proof of virtue. Epictetus warns against showy training in Discourses 3.12. Being able to perform an impressive feat does not tell us whether it improves our judgement or conduct.
Near the end of the chapter, he repeats advice attributed to Apollonius: if you undertake a private exercise in restraint, do it without telling everyone. The example involves cold water on a hot day. You do not need to copy it. The instruction to keep quiet is useful enough.
If the main benefit of your hardship is the photograph you can post afterwards, it is worth asking what you are training.
Restraint also needs a purpose. In Enchiridion 2, Epictetus advises the beginner to suspend desire for the present. The qualification matters. It is a training instruction for someone learning what is worth pursuing, not a requirement to spend the rest of life refusing everything pleasant. Read Enchiridion 2. His advice on delaying a tempting pleasure gets a fuller treatment in How to tame a craving, Epictetus style.
For this exercise, choose something ordinary and safe: the task you agreed to finish, the urge to interrupt, or the impulse to reach for your phone halfway through a paragraph.
A small way to try it today
Pick one situation and the half you want to practise there.
If forbear is harder, wait before following the familiar urge. When you reach for your phone during the task, leave it alone for about ten ordinary breaths. You are allowed to use it afterwards. First, give yourself enough space to notice what you are doing.
If bear is harder, stay briefly with an ordinary discomfort that is safe to stay with. Let the awkward pause exist. Keep working on the paragraph for a little longer. Give it about ten breaths before deciding what to do next.
Keep breathing normally. If attending to the breath is unpleasant, count to ten or rest your attention on an object in the room instead. Stop if the exercise makes things worse.
The number is a modern suggestion, not an ancient instruction or a scientifically established dose. A short pause is simply manageable enough to try. Once today is enough to begin.
You may wait and still pick up the phone. That gives you something specific to examine: what happened just before you reached for it, and did you notice any more clearly this time? There is no need to turn one lapse into a verdict on your character.
At the end of Gellius’s account, taking the two words seriously comes with a large promise: a life almost free of wrongdoing and full of tranquillity. I would not promise you that on the strength of a ten-breath exercise.
What you can try is smaller. Choose one difficulty worth staying with, or one urge worth delaying. Then see what happens when the words have to become an action.